How to Track the Price of Any Product (and Never Overpay)

To track any product's price, do three things: keep an eye on its price history, set a drop alert, and compare the exact same item across several retailers instead of trusting one store's sticker. Many trackers only manage the first two — and only on Amazon — which is how a genuinely cheaper price on eBay or another retailer slips straight past you.

Price tracking isn't about obsessing over every product you glance at. It's about knowing, at the moment you're ready to buy, whether the number on screen is a real deal or a dressed-up regular price. Here's a method that works for a £15 kettle or a £1,500 laptop, in any category, without installing five different tools.

What does it actually take to track a price properly?

Three ingredients, and you want all of them. Miss one and you're back to guessing.

• Price history — what the product has genuinely cost over recent weeks and months, so you can tell a real drop from a fake 'was' price.
• Cross-retailer comparison — the same item checked across Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and other retailers at the same moment, because the cheapest seller keeps changing.
• A drop alert or a live check at the point of purchase — so you act when the price is actually good, not just whenever you happened to look.
• A counterfeit and seller check — a low price on a fake or a dodgy third-party listing isn't a saving, it's a loss.

Why does price history beat the 'was' price?

The 'was £99, now £59' sticker is one of the oldest tricks in retail. Under the UK's rules on misleading pricing — overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority and reinforced by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act — a reference price is meant to be honest. But plenty of 'was' prices still lean on a brief, barely-used higher price that exists mainly to make the current one look generous.

Recorded price history cuts through that. If a product sat at £59 for most of the last three months, spiked to £99 for a week, then 'dropped' back to £59 on sale day, the history shows it instantly. A real discount looks like a genuine step down from a stable price. A fake one looks like a yo-yo. You don't have to take anyone's word for it — you just read the line on the chart.

How do you compare the same product across retailers?

This is the step single-store trackers skip, and it's where the actual money is. The same TV, the same headphones, the same tub of protein can be cheaper on eBay than Amazon one week and the reverse the next. Doing it by hand means opening tabs, matching model numbers, checking that 'the same' listing really is the same item and not a lookalike bundle, and factoring in delivery. It's tedious enough that most people don't bother — they just buy from wherever they landed.

The faster way is to let a tool do the matching for you on the product page, before you check out, so you see every retailer's live price side by side without leaving the page you're already on.

How do you set a price-drop alert that reaches you?

If you're not buying today, an alert saves you from checking manually. The principle is simple: pick a target price, choose how you want to be told, and wait. The honest caveat is that an alert only watches wherever it's pointed — set one on a single Amazon listing and you'll never hear about the better price that appears somewhere else. That's why the most reliable moment to compare is the moment you're about to pay: a live, cross-retailer check catches the cheapest option right then, alert or no alert.

A simple routine you can copy for any product

1. Find the exact product — match the model number or full name, not a similar-looking one.
2. Check its price history to see whether the current price is genuinely low or just a repackaged normal price.
3. Compare the same item live across retailers, delivery included, not just the store you started on.
4. Check the seller and listing for counterfeit red flags — especially on marketplaces with third-party sellers.
5. Buy now if the price is genuinely good; if not, set a drop alert and wait it out.

Where WEM fits — and how we actually make money

WEM is a free Chrome and Edge extension built to do exactly this routine for you. On the product page, it compares the same item live across Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and major retailers, keeps a recorded price history so you can see whether a discount is real, and runs a trust engine that filters out counterfeits and fake 'was' prices. It does the same for hotels across sites like Expedia and Hotels.com. You always check out on the retailer's own site — WEM never handles your payment.

On the money side, we're upfront: WEM is free for shoppers, and the retailer pays us an affiliate commission when you buy through a comparison. The model is built so we only benefit when you pay less than you otherwise would have. We're an approved publisher with Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, Awin, CJ and Rakuten. No fee to you, no markup on the price.

One honest note to finish on: not every sale is a con. Genuine discounts happen all the time, and plenty of 'was' prices are perfectly real. The point of tracking isn't to assume you're being ripped off — it's to stop guessing. Once you can see the history and the live price everywhere at once, overpaying becomes a choice rather than an accident.